‘Bikes’ extols freedom of two-wheelers

Sailing ships excepted, there is no more beautiful means of human transportation than a bicycle. Its pared-down geometry of circle and line is Euclid set in motion. As a joke, Marcel Duchamp famously put a bicyle wheel atop a stool as an example of “ready-made” sculpture. Ho, ho, non-cyclists say. The joke is on them, since that wheel, as an appreciative Duchamp knew perfectly well, was as beautiful as a Brancusi.